The Krehbiel Group - Something I Learned Yesterday

What kinds of engagement metrics are associated with a propensity to subscribe? I signed up for The Audiencers email, and the welcome email pointed me to this great article: “Ask the experts: what are the most valuable engagement metrics to measure in a subscription model?” It’s a crucial topic because people talk a lot about “engagement,” but it’s often not exactly sure what they mean by that. You can measure engagement a lot of different ways. Which are the ones that are key to a subscription model? You should read the article yourself, but I’m going to pull out a few points that I found interesting. Distinguish content engagement with propensity to subscribe. In other words, a person can be very engaged with your content and never have any intention of subscribing, while another person might take specific actions that are highly correlated with subscribing. An example is e-newsletter sign-up. If e-newsletters are sent at a set time, on a set frequency, this can form a habit, which is the kind of engagement you want. You’ve also created a direct relationship with that customer. Rather than waiting for them to come to you, you can go to them. Registration is also valuable. People who register are far more likely to subscribe than anonymous people. This next one surprised me a little, but it makes sense. Exposing readers to a diverse array of topics and authors is better for promoting subscriptions. You don’t want your content-recommendation engine to send people down a spiral – always showing them the same topic. Time spent on your website or app is also a good predictor of conversion. “The conversion probability increases by 130 times if the media time increases by 10 minutes per week. The churn probability is halved if the media time increases by 10 minutes per week.” It’s important to remember that “engagement” really isn’t the goal. The goal is to get a loyal subscriber. So a “back-to-front” approach is to find out what your loyal subscribers do and focus on those actions – i.e., presumably, trying to get other people to behave the same way. The Lenfest Institute found that readers are more likely to become subscribers when they read 5+ articles per month or provide their email address. The article includes a chart that maps various actions to increased likelihood to subscribe. Reads 5+ articles / month or has provided an email come in top at 5x to 10x. Follows your brand on social media is next at 4x to 6x. Reading multiple categories of content, accessing your content across multiple platforms, or lives in your market area and reads local news all give a 2x to 3x boost. This is all great stuff, and I encourage you to read the article, but there’s a logical issue that I’m struggling with. Let’s say you find that your faithful, long-time subscribers are far more likely to sign up for your e-newsletter. Does it follow that promoting your e-newsletter is going to transform those new sign-ups into faithful, long-time subscribers? That doesn’t follow. You’ve changed the conditions of the test. I do believe it’s a good idea to promote the kind of behaviors that are associated with long-term customer value. But I suspect that as you do that, the numbers are going to change. That is, the commitment of the people who signed up for your e-newsletter before you started rigorously promoting it won’t be the same as the commitment of the latter group. Resources Ask the experts: what are the most valuable engagement metrics to measure in a subscription model? https://theaudiencers.com/decisions/ask-the-experts-what-are-the-most-valuable-engagement-metrics-to-measure-in-a-subscription-model/

Concisely tell your audience what they need to know. But does that sell subscriptions? Bo Sacks distributed an article in which Axios co-founder Jim VandeHie gives his advice on “smart brevity.” That is, getting to the point and eliminating unnecessary words. It’s a good article, and you should read the whole thing – I’ll provide a link below – but here are his major points. Think of your audience before you begin. Start with your most important point to grab reader attention. Keep it simple and eliminate fluff. Use visuals where appropriate. Write as if you’re speaking to someone. Stop once you’ve delivered the important information. That’s all great advice, and it reminds me of the old “inverted pyramid” model of writing, where the lead paragraph (lede) contains the most essential information – who, what, when, where, why. I don’t know why, but some newspapers trended away from that format and we started getting articles that began with a bunch of irrelevant fluff. As if you were reading a novel. Mr. VandeHie’s says “the average person spends 26 seconds on a story or update, which isn’t much beyond the first paragraph. That’s why we decided we weren’t going to waste people’s time with long prose, and smart brevity was born.” Right. So this method is designed to attract “the average person.” Obviously there’s some benefit to that approach, but it reminds of the topic I mentioned yesterday, which is that the tactics used to make a popular and profitable website – an ad-driven website – may draw an audience that isn’t inclined to purchase subscriptions. Are people who subscribe different than “the average person”? I asked ChatGPT, and the answer is yes. They’re older. They have higher income. They’re more educated. They consume more media in general. Which makes me suspect – again … I spoke about this yesterday – that if you want to sell subscriptions, you shouldn’t design your site to attract “the average person.” And that trying to sell subscriptions to an audience of average people is going to frustrate you. The question then becomes, how do you write articles and design a website to attract the sort of people who do subscribe? And this is where I fear the entire web-based ecosystem is tilted against you. Google is going to prefer websites that are written according to their expectation of free content supported by ads. So if you want to create a website to appeal to likely subscribers, you might have to break the rules. You might have to come up with a new way of thinking about a website, and a new set of metrics. Because all the standard methods and metrics are going to bring you that same audience that isn’t really keen on subscribing. Resources Co-founder of Axios advises journalists to write audience-first https://www.inma.org/blogs/innovative-advertising-solutions/post.cfm/co-founder-of-axios-advises-journalists-to-write-audience-first Maybe you can’t sell subscriptions because the people who are driving your traffic have the wrong goal https://krehbielgroup.com/2023/10/23/maybe-you-cant-sell-subscriptions-because-the-people-who-are-driving-your-traffic-have-the-wrong-goal/

To sell subscriptions, think about value, not audiences Bo Sacks sent an email about publishing execs telling advertisers about their ability to grow and engage audiences. That’s getting harder because platforms like Facebook are not promoting publisher content like they used to. Which gives me a good opportunity to remind everybody not to rely on platforms. Dominic Carter from The Sun says their audience growth has come from “giving the people what they want,” including coverage of TV celebrities. At that point I stopped and wondered if this is precisely why media companies are having such trouble selling subscriptions. The top of the funnel – traffic to the site – is “what people want.” Titillating stuff, I guess. Maybe it’s about who wore what on the red carpet. That sort of thing attracts eyeballs, and if you do it right you can attract a particular audience, but … what do you have when you’ve done that? Do you have people who are interested in buying something? Magazine sites struggle to get people to spend $10 on an annual subscription. Meanwhile, people are spending $11 a month on Spotify, and $15 a month on Netflix. If you can’t sell your product, here are two of the many questions you might ask. Am I offering something of value? Am I offering it to the right people? Is it possible – I’m asking, sincerely – that the “build an audience for advertisers” mindset – and the techniques that come along with it – is a poor match for the “find people who might buy” mindset? How are you qualifying your prospects? From an ad perspective, you’re looking for a certain demographic with “an interest” in some subject. But I can have a vague, passing interest in all kinds of subjects where I have no interest at all in spending any money. There’s nothing “need to have” there. It’s just candy. A distraction. Marketers often talk about the difference between nice to have and need to have. An ad-driven site doesn’t even pass the “nice to have” threshold. It’s lower than that. It’s “nice to take a quick look.” “Nice to distract myself while I’m waiting in line.” If I want to sell content, I want to focus on things people need to have and are willing to spend money on. So here’s what I’m wondering. Is it reasonable to expect an ad-supported website to draw an audience that’s interested in paying money? Is it possible that you need a completely different mindset and approach to create a “top of the funnel” site for selling subscriptions? Resources Advertising Week Briefing: Publishers pitch their methods for growing and engaging audiences to marketers https://digiday.com/media/advertising-week-briefing-publishers-pitch-their-methods-for-growing-and-engaging-audiences-to-marketers/

It’s time to get past platitudes and talk honestly about print. We’re always hearing about the death of print and digital transformation. All the fun, exciting stuff seems to be happening online, and print titles are dying left and right. At the same time, if you try to move your print subscribers to digital, most of them will leave you. That’s the sad fact. People love print. And there are some stories of titles going back into print, and new print magazines that are succeeding. But let’s face it, the economics of print are terrible. Printing and mailing costs are through the roof, they keep going up, and there’s constant downward pressure on prices. People expect to get a glossy, 80-page magazine mailed to their house once a month for $8 a year. It’s crazy. You can’t sustain a business with those kinds of numbers. I know someone is thinking, “just get over it for God’s sake! Why agonize over this? The world has gone digital. Get with it and stop trying to sell buggy whips.” Okay, create digital-only products. Have at it. But unlike buggy whips, people do actually like print. Even younger people. There is a preference for digital, but it’s not as if young people all prefer digital. That’s a common misconception. The problem publishers face is that people don’t like to pay for print, but they still want it. So there is a market to be served here. The question is whether we can be clever enough to make it work. So what can you do? Here are some options. You can move your printing to China. For some reason, they’re able to print things cheaply and we’re not. Maybe they’re not subject to the same environmental and human resources restrictions as American companies, but however they’re doing it, they are cheaper. So if it doesn't bother you that it's probably not fair competition, and if you can wait 6-8 weeks for the product to arrive, that’s an option. Trade paperback books can go that route, for example. You can raise prices to cover costs. Most magazines can’t do this. They’d lose 80 percent or more of their subscribers, and the numbers just don’t work. But you could re-imagine your product as a luxury item, or create a new luxury product, and sell it at a premium price. It’s worth considering. Some titles have done this successfully. You can accept that print is a loss leader and create other business opportunities around it. For example, Sell a cheap investing newsletter to entice people to subscribe to your really expensive investing newsletter. Find the enthusiasts in your market and sell high-ticket items to them. Cruises. Special events with the editors. Dinners. Monetize the audience itself. I don’t mean in the creepy way that Google does, where they give us something for free and make us the product. Get consent. Tell people what you’re doing. Don’t be Mr. Creepy. But if you can honestly and decently get data from your audience that’s valuable to other partners, try it. For example, if you have a magazine about fishing, your subscribers might be perfectly willing to give you information that would be very valuable to people who sell boats, or rods and reels, or fishing lures. And there are other ways to use your money-losing print magazine to build a money-making business. The economics of print are bad and they’re getting worse. But people still love print. For good reason. Print is simply better than digital in many ways. Digital is better than print in many ways too. They each have their benefits. But consumers aren't going to pay for magazines and other periodical print products the way they used to. Those days are over, and every print publisher is facing this problem. Who’s going to come up with the right formula to make all this work? Or … do we just give up and admit that everybody’s going to be playing on Tik Tok all day? Do you want to give your granddaughter a smart phone, or a hardback copy of Goodnight Moon? I love technology, but I don’t want to live in a digital-only world and I don’t want to be assimilated by the Borg. So I would very much like to help you find a way to make a successful print business even given the horrible economic realities of print.

Today’s podcast is simply my summary of a very interesting talk by Roger Martin on Harvard Business Review that my friend Heather Snyder posted on LinkedIn. He raises the question, what is the difference between planning and strategy? Strategy, he says, is 1. an integrated set of choices 2. that position you on a playing field of your choice 3. in a way that you win. For example, to form a strategy we might ask these questions. * Why we should be on this particular playing field? * How are we going to be better than anybody else? A strategic theory must be coherent and doable. Planning, on the other hand, doesn't have to have internal coherence. It's a list of things to do that get their coherence from the strategy. Plans have to do with resources -- that’s the cost side of business. Strategy specifies a competitive outcome you wish to achieve. You control plans. And while you control a strategy, you can’t control the outcome of a strategy because it depends on your customers and your competitors. "I will build a factory" is a plan. "Customers will prefer my product" is part of a strategy. Martin says it's easy to fall into a "planning trap." It's a trap because it's comfortable. It's within your control. Strategy will make you feel nervous because you can't prove that it will succeed. But a good strategy will give your organization a chance to do something great. When you build a strategy, you should list the things that would have to be true for it to work. E.g., What would have to be true about our sales, our customers, our competition, etc., to achieve this goal. Then you watch to see if things turn out that way. And since they might not, you need a mechanism to tweak and adjust in response to changes. Finally, he says don't let a strategy get over-complicated. Try to get it on one page. It should include ... 1. Here's where we're choosing to play. 2. Here's how we're choosing to win. 3. These are the capabilities we need in place. 4. These are the management systems we need. That's how we'll achieve our goal. Resources https://www.tiktok.com/@thebizchannel/video/7284752739739995435?_r=1&_t=8gaAF7diaqM

When you’re dealing with vendor negotiations and tech evaluations, miscommunication is a big problem. It can lead to an incorrect evaluation of possible solution, and it can cost you money. In today’s podcast I will explain five scenarios where a vendor might initially decline a client's request, and how both parties can turn this into an opportunity. 1. Misunderstanding the Request: This should be your go-to explanation. The odds that someone has understood a problem and then spoken clearly and precisely about a solution are very low. Often, miscommunication occurs due to different interpretations of tech- or business-related terms. For example, if you ask if a platform “manages paywalls,” the vendor might home in on the fact that they don’t process payments, where that’s not necessarily what’s being asked. Before you settle for a no, ask probing questions to make sure you're speaking the same language. 2. It’s Outside Our Scope: Vendors may specialize in very particular areas, or emphasize their unique value proposition in a way that excludes other ways of approaching a problem. Dig deeper to find out. But when a client's request actually does fall outside the vendor's expertise, this is a chance for the vendor to behave like a human and point the customer in the correct direction. It doesn’t win the sale, but it creates good will. And it proves you’re not an asshole. 3. We're Working on It: A vendor may have lost a lot of business because too many prospects were looking for a function that the vendor doesn’t provide. So they put it on their roadmap. This gives the prospect an interesting choice. If you need a solution today, you have to move along. But if you have some time, you can partner with the vendor and help them create a solution that works well for your business. That’s a win for both of you. But if you do this, be sure to stay in contact. It's a big disappointment when the vendor says, "Hey, we built that thing you've been asking for," and it doesn't do what you wanted. 4. We Think That’s the Wrong Approach: I love Reuben sandwiches, but I prefer mine open-faced. Once I made the mistake of allowing a cook who does Reubens closed face to make me an open-faced sandwich. It was a disaster. Most of the issues we face in marketing, publishing and related technologies are not matters of right or wrong, but sometimes you have to make a choice. For example, some Customer Data Platforms only do deterministic matching, while some do deterministic and probabilistic matching. Some Email Service Providers allow you to attach PDFs while others do not. There are arguments to be made each way. This is not an opportunity to start an argument or evangelize for your point of view. If the client’s and the vendor’s approaches are truly incompatible, it's time to part ways amicably, preferably with some recommendations from the vendor on other services that meet the client's needs. 5. Legal Restrictions: Not everything is a matter of preference. Sometimes the law does have a say, and often that will involve privacy protections. Sometimes this is a matter of jurisdiction. A European company might require privacy protections based on European law that don't apply to every U.S. company. Other times, the law isn't as clear as people might think, and vendor A might think something is illegal while vendor B does not. It's important to review these things carefully. If you decide to go with the more lax interpretation, check with a lawyer. If the vendor's lawyers have decided to take a particular stand on a law, the client isn't going to talk them out of it, and shouldn’t try. But the vendor with the strict approach should have the courtesy to provide references to other companies who see things the client’s way. It's not the vendor's business to enforce the law. Learn something Sometimes a vendor isn’t a good match for a client's needs, and it's time to move on. But don't jump to that conclusion, and don’t leave it there. Use the opportunity to learn something from the encounter. If you need help working with technology vendors, give me a call. I’m pretty good at that, and I can help you work through the process and implement an effective solution.

If you're considering a customer data platform, here are a few big picture ideas to keep in mind. People like to say the devil is in the details, but I think the devil is more clever than that, so if you want to avoid disaster you need both the bird's eye view and the snail's-eye view. Start with the CDP's origin story. What was it before it was a CDP? It might have been an email service provider (ESP), a marketing automation platform, a tag management system, or some other type of marketing technology. You want to know this because that origin story will reflect the corporate mindset. It gives you an insight into the way they're inclined to think about things. You also want to know if the CDP is a walled garden. Is the CDP so integrated with other technologies that you're going to have trouble if you try to use some other service. For example, if the CDP is integrated with an ESP, does that mean you're going to have trouble if you choose to use another ESP? Or if the CDP is integrated with a particular CRM package, does that mean you have to use that CRM? This is related to what I call the best of breed vs. swiss army knife question. Some CDPs adopt a fairly narrow perspective on what they're supposed to offer. For example, they may focus on creating the "single customer view," and expect you to rely on other service for website activations, content recommendations, marketing automation, paywall management, and so forth. They'll say they're "best of breed" in their narrow focus on customer data, and they recommend that you use other "best of breed" services for other things. There's some sense in that, but there's also the question of cost, and how many different services you want to try to integrate. I use the analogy of the swiss army knife because none of the tools in a swiss army knife are best of breed. The knife isn't the best knife, the corkscrew isn't the best corkscrew. But you have all of them in your pocket. You need to think long and hard about which approach is likely to work better for your company. The same idea applies to reporting. Does the CDP offer internal reporting, or do they expect you to integrate with external BI tools? There's no right or wrong answer to any of these questions. You want to go through these big picture issues to see if there's compatibility and a good fit. Does their offering serve your needs? If you're looking into CDPs, you'll also see the term "composable". It's a concept that applies to software in general, and I think of it like Lego blocks. A "composable" system offers a lot of independent modules that address specific needs or functions, and can easily be plugged in to other systems. In the CDP context, this might mean that you have your own customer database, and various CDP functions sit on top of that -- where in a typical CDP configuration, the CDP would house the customer database. After you've reviewed all of these issues, verify it with actual clients. The CDP may say they integrate with such and so ESP, but there are good and bad integrations. Find out. Call the ESP and see what they think about it. Find some customers who rely on that integration. In short, sales people like to say yes. You need to find out what sort of a "yes" it is. Now -- for the snail's eye view, you're going to have to give me a call, because that depends on your particular situation. There's no way I can do a general purpose podcast on that. Resources The myth of the single customer record https://krehbielgroup.com/2022/10/04/the-myth-of-the-single-customer-record/ What is the best Customer Data Platform? https://krehbielgroup.com/what-is-the-best-customer-data-platform/

Data products require a little more than your standard product development rules Renewd sponsored a webinar yesterday titled “Unlocking insights: How to collect and transform large volumes of data to successfully build a new data product.” If you’re not a member of Renewd, please consider joining. It’s a good group. I’ll provide a link below. Today I’m going to summarize what I heard in that webinar, because many publishers are thinking about creating a data product. That’s a good idea because data products are often valued by investors more highly than text- and analysis-based products. Before you start down that road, here are some foundational principles and perspectives to keep in mind. Most of this is from the webinar, but of course I have to add my own perspective and spin. Follow a Customer-Centric Approach The foundation of a successful data project lies in understanding the value it brings to the customer, not just to your business. To do this effectively, ask yourself who the project is for and, equally importantly, who it is not for. Disqualification is often as vital as qualification, as it prevents resources from being wasted on irrelevant targets. What problem are you solving? A clearly defined problem provides direction and ensures your project has a tangible impact and a clear benefit. Also, consider how your product fits into the customer's workflow. Consider how the data might need to be transformed on the customer side, who gets to see it, and what value it brings to the customer are vital components in this process. Focus on “must have” not “nice to have” solutions. Do objective qualitative research When you’re considering a new data product, you need to do market research to find out what your potential customers want. You need to avoid "happy ears" in this process, where you hear what you want to hear. It’s crucial to get an objective perspective on what the market really needs, and not just confirm your own biases. After you do this qualitative research, follow it up with quantitative research to find the size and scope of your potential market. It’s also important to encourage collaboration across functional areas within your team to avoid internal biases. Remember Gall's Law Gall's Law says, "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.” Start with something small that works in the real world and build from there. Avoid the mistake of overcomplicating things from the outset, and focus on building a strong foundation first. Data Structure Understand your data inputs thoroughly. Consider whether and how data needs to be transformed and establish robust data governance rules. Define the quality of the output you aim to achieve, and foster a data culture within your organization, ensuring that everyone understands the data's meaning and relevance. Product Differentiation To differentiate your data product in the market, consider three angles. Completeness: Determine how complete your data set needs to be to meet customer needs. It's not always necessary to get 100% coverage; sometimes, 70% can suffice. Accuracy: Assess how accurate your data needs to be. Remember that higher accuracy often comes with increased costs, and sometimes additional accuracy isn’t worth the expense. Timeliness: Evaluate the speed of updates, and how quickly you need to deliver updated data. Some clients may require real-time updates, while others may accept periodic reports. Seeing around corners The cutting edge of value in a data project lies in providing insights into "what's coming next." Even if the predictions have low confidence, giving customers a glimpse of future trends and opportunities can be invaluable. Remember the Four Vs of Data The four Vs are Volume, Velocity, Veracity, and Variety. Consider each as you shape your data project. Data Transformation There are three key areas of data transformation to consider in your project: Extraction: Focus on how you will extract the data you need from the sources you have to work with. For example, you may have to pull specific fields out of a string of undifferentiated text. Cleansing and Normalizing: You want all your data to have the same format. For example, you could convert all addresses to post-office standards, or all your time data into GMT. Mapping: How is your data taxonomy going to map to the taxonomy used by your clients? A data product has to be more than internally consistent and logical: it has to work with your client’s systems. In summary, a successful data project requires a customer-centric approach, clear problem-solving, robust data structure, effective differentiation, and a focus on the edge of value. Following these principles and considering the specific needs of your target audience will help you develop a product that will bring substantial value to both your customers and your business. Start small with something that works in the real world, then build on what you have based on how your customers actually use the service. Stay flexible and don’t let your internal assumptions get in the way of creating something your customers can actually use. Resources Renewd.net https://renewd.net/ Unlocking insights: How to collect and transform large volumes of data to successfully build a new data product https://renewd.net/?resources=unlocking-insights-how-to-collect-and-transform-large-volumes-of-data-to-successfully-build-a-new-data-product

You don’t have to be a Luddite to see the value in print Bo Sacks has distributed a few articles recently on print publications. I’ll link them below. Some publishers are wondering if there might be a resurgence of print. “Resurgence” sounds like too optimistic of a word to me. I think, rather, that people are starting to understand that all the “death of print” and “digital transformation” talk was a little hyped. Print will continue to have an important, but smaller, place in the publishing world. But why? Why will print endure? Print and digital both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I think we’re starting to forget the advantages of a print publication, so I’m going to review some of them briefly today. I’m not calling for a return to print or anything silly like that. I’m just pointing out that print still has an important place in some cases. The first thing that comes to mind is that Google isn’t watching over my shoulder when I'm reading a magazine. That’s not a trivial issue. Print publications have better aesthetics. - Images are sharper, and can be bigger. - There are more design and typography options. - A print publication can have different types of paper. - Print can appeal to other senses, like the smell of the page or the sound of the page turning. A print magazine curates the material to create an immersive experience. It puts everything in a well-designed order and format. A print publication can be much more expertly and beautifully designed than a website. Something is lost when articles lose their position within the larger structure. A rough analogy is the vinyl LP, where you play all the songs in the order that the artist has selected rather than just having all the songs in whatever order you want. There are benefits to both, of course. The tactile experience of flipping through a magazine is enjoyable, and it can’t be reproduced digitally. And it’s very goofy when people try to do it. There’s less eye strain with a print publication. There are fewer distractions when you’re reading print. There are no notifications screaming at you every 20 seconds. So it’s easier to focus when you’re reading print. Print is very portable, and it doesn’t require the internet. On the other hand, I can carry 1,000 books with me in a kindle. Studies allegedly show that you comprehend what you read in print a lot better. Some of that might be because you’re involving more of your senses in the experience. Highlighting and note taking is very different in print and digital. If I highlight something in a book, I can go back and see the highlights very easily. On the other hand, it’s harder to copy the text. A print publication can’t be scraped by AI bots. At least not as easily. Print is far better for children. It absolutely kills me when I see kids with smartphones, but when I see a kid with a book, it makes me happy. A print publication has limited availability, and could be collectible. Despite the silliness about NFTs, web pages are not collectible. Finally, reading print is more relaxing. What should publishers take from all this? A lot of the benefits that I’ve mentioned only apply to certain kinds of writing. For some things, I really do just want to read the words on a screen and be done with it. But if the benefits I’ve mentioned seem to fit better with the content you produce, and the experience you want to provide, reconsider print. Resources Grub Street’s Jo Cummings and Peter Houston: What kind of idiots still make magazines? https://voices.media/grub-streets-jo-cummings-and-peter-houston-what-kind-of-idiots-still-make-magazines/ Print's not dead: the best magazines for graphic design inspiration https://www.creativeboom.com/resources/prints-not-dead-the-best-magazines-for-graphic-design-inspiration/ Elle magazine returns to print as ‘readers tire of digital deluge’ https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/elle-magazine-returns-to-print-as-readers-tire-of-digital-deluge-20230915-p5e4za.html

I’ve advocated external-facing guidelines for artificial intelligence so that publishers can protect themselves against bots that scrape their content, train their models on it, and then use their own content to compete with them. But that’s not today’s topic. Publishers also need internal guidelines about how AI can be used within their organization. Bo Sacks distributed an article by Pierre de Villiers that makes this point pretty well. I’ll link to it below. I’m a big fan of checklists, so I started to dream up a list of topics that such a policy ought to address. * Can AI be used at all? I know some companies that prohibit it altogether. * If AI can be used, is there a preference for one over another — e.g., ChatGPT over Bard. * Or, rather, should there be a requirement that the results from one large language model be checked against another? * If an article does rely on AI, does that need to be disclosed to the fact-checker, the editor, or to the reader? * There are different levels of use of AI. Should these be defined and distinguished? For example, it might be okay to use AI for background, but not okay to use the text verbatim. * Are there special procedures to deal with AI’s known bias and inaccuracies? Along those lines, this quote from the article made me laugh. “If you’re The New York Times, you cannot publish things that are not checked for biases.” I guess that means the correct biases. In addition to policies, publishers need a user’s guide. * As inaccuracies and biases are discovered, they should be reported to the people who use the technology so they can keep an eye out for them. * As people find ways to avoid such inaccuracy and bias, they should be reported. For example, it’s often a good idea to ask ChatGPT if what it just told you is true. It’s remarkable how many times it will catch its own errors. * Employees should share prompts and techniques and that work well for specific needs. The user’s guide sounds like a user’s group, or a bulletin board for everyone on staff so they can collectively learn how to use AI more effectively. Who should create these AI policies? I really liked this quote from the article. “The key to an effective AI strategy, … is to combine the managerial ability of a company’s top structure with the creativity of those on the shop floor trying to find the best way to make AI work for them. “You want to set a clear direction within your company, but you also want innovation and clever use cases and that seldom comes from the top of the organisation ….” “They come from the people using the technologies. A good policy, in my opinion, will need input from at least three groups. Corporate, legal, and the people who actually use the AI. Resources Steffen Damborg: Publishers must urgently draw up AI guidelines https://mediamakersmeet.com/steffen-damborg-publishers-must-urgently-draw-up-ai-guidelines/

The best paywall in the world won’t create committed, engaged subscribers The prevailing wisdom seems to be that AI will result in an explosion of content on the internet. It’s already trivially easy to post something online, but with AI tools, the sky’s the limit. AI can write and post a thousand SEO-optimized articles before a human can open WordPress. But Bo Sacks recently distributed an article by Matt D’Cruz that makes the opposite claim. “There’s going to be a lot less free content around.” I don’t think he meant that as a blanket statement. In context, I think he’s saying that existing publishers will be putting more of their content behind paywalls. He then asks, “But are users ready for a subscription-heavy future?” The bad news is, no, they’re not. A recent study from the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford says “averaged across 20 countries, less than a fifth are currently paying for online news.” “Subscribers” – that is, people who are willing to pay – “are motivated by a desire to access higher-quality news than is available from free sources.” Lapsed subscribers – who were originally attracted with a low-price introductory offer – failed to see the value when it came time to pay the full sticker price. Publishers seem to be focusing on offers. How many views before the paywall? How long should the trial period be? How do we step people up from the intro price to the full price? Those are all important things, but only if you’ve already solved the value problem. The reason people don’t subscribe is fairly simple. They don’t think what you’re providing is worth the money you’re asking for it. You have to solve that problem, and no amount of tinkering with a paywall is going to fix that. The issue publishers need to focus on is how they can make what they offer valuable when AI can create 100 times as much information at almost no cost. I can envision a few different approaches to this problem. Use AI to lower your costs, and therefore your subscription prices. Play off some sort of “support the humans” campaign, the way some companies say “support local journalism.” Do something AI can’t do. Unfortunately, that set will become smaller and smaller. Use AI to expand what you’re able to offer. For example, use AI for the data-heavy tasks, but use humans to provide context. The real challenge is to provide something that has genuine value. Customers are very clearly publishers that they’re not doing this. Tweaking offers and monkeying with your paywall settings simply won’t save the day. Resources Paying for News: Price-Conscious Consumers Look for Value amid Cost-of-Living Crisis https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-09/Newman_and_Robertson_Paying_for_News.pdf Who will be your company’s Head of AI Transformation? https://mediamakersmeet.com/who-is-your-companys-head-of-ai-transformation/

Schoolofthought.org has some interesting tools that you should take a look at. They have a collection of logical fallacies and cognitive biases that’s fun to review. They also have a deck of cards with brainstorming tools. I have a few words to say about brainstorming, but that will have to wait for another day. Today I’d like to zero in on two cards from the deck of brainstorming tools. They are “Imagine you’re the devil,” and “No Limits.” What would someone who had no ethical restraints do in your situation? The idea is not to do those things, but to learn from the mental exercise of it. Why? How does that help? First, you might be unnecessarily limiting yourself. Casting off the burden of being a good guy might open up your mind to new possibilities. Again, I’m not advocating being evil, but thinking like the devil might spur an idea that’s not actually evil. For example, let’s say I have a subscription newsletter (which I do) and I wanted to get more subscribers (which I do). An evil person might send the newsletter to non-subscribers along with an invoice. Just say “you’re a subscriber now, whether you like it or not.” My newsletter is free, by the way, so I can’t do that. But this “evil idea” sounds suspiciously like a “forced-free trial,” which is not evil, depending on how you do it. There are more or less devious ways to do a forced-free trial. But I can imagine that this idea originally came from somebody who was willing to cast off some restraints. To build on that same concept, some people confuse “mischief,” or even “disruption” with evil. They mistake breaking a convention with breaking a commandment. Thinking like the devil might help you break out of some conventions that are holding you back. Second, your competitors might be perfectly willing to do evil things. They might be thinking like the devil, so thinking about what the devil might do can help you prepare to defend against ruthless competition. The next card is called “No Limits,” and it’s saying try to think like God. What if you had no limitations? If you could do anything. You have superpowers, no end of money, unlimited time, and magical technology. What could you do? The benefit of this technique is that it allows you to imagine a perfect state, a perfect outcome, without being shackled by all the “no can do” realities. Once you imagine this perfect state, you might find creative ways to get closer to it. But at a minimum it gives you something to aim for, and then, when some magical technology comes along that can overcome one of your “no can dos,” you’re mentally prepared. You’re ready to leap ahead. Anyway, I recommend these cards. They can be fun, and they can spur creative ideas. If you need help with the creative process in your business, give me a call. I have a lot of ideas. Resources Creating thinking card deck https://thethinkingshop.org/collections/products/products/creative-thinking-cards-deck

Lock-in effects work, but sometimes they border on being dirty pool Theaudiencers.com comes through with another good article, this time by Lennart Schneider. It’s titled “Lock-in effects: How to make your subscription irreplaceable” A “lock-in effect” is a way to capture a customer, and Lennart is clear that he’s not recommending all of these. Some of them sound like “dark patterns.” He identifies 9. Ecosystem. This is like the Apple vs. Android or Apple vs. Microsoft issue. People are likely to think, “You know, I’ve already spent all this money on Apple software. I’ll lose all that if I switch.” Sometimes that’s a real issue, and sometimes it’s just the sunk cost fallacy speaking, but in either event, it does keep people locked in to a product. Data. Maybe you have all your family photos in one system and it’s a pain – or even impossible – to move everything somewhere else. Personalization. If you’ve been using Spotify for a long time, you’ve spent all that time refining the algorithm so it can appeal to your musical tastes. If you switch to another service you’ll lose all that. Network effects. Some services become more valuable when other people use it. If all your friends use one service, or if everyone in your industry uses one service, that might keep you faithful to that service. A new service might be objectively better, but it doesn’t have the right people. Price guarantees. If you grandfather people in at a lower price, it gets harder each year for them to change. The Washington Post offered a guaranteed price for 50 years. After year 20, it’s probably hard to switch to somebody else. Credits. Let’s say I’m tired of Audible, but I realize I’ve accumulated 20 credits that I can use towards my next book. If I leave, I lose all of those. Additional users. When a subscription is used with other people – friends, family, or colleagues – it’s much more difficult to go to another service. Bundling. I get Hulu for free because I have Spotify. If I cancel Spotify, I lose Hulu. Status. Apple is the best example. I’ve been told by tech geeks that their products are objectively less impressive than Android phones, but there’s some sort of social cache to having an iPhone. These are all great things to consider, but there is a bit of a fine line at times between making yourself irreplaceable and being annoying. For example, making it hard for your customers to get their own data out of your platform might keep them as a customer, but not a happy customer. Resources Lock-in effects: How to make your subscription irreplaceable https://theaudiencers.com/operations/lock-in-effects-how-to-make-your-subscription-irreplaceable/

What if publishers never used the word “content”? I had a great discussion with Paul Gerbino and Dominic Young on LinkedIn yesterday about the word “content.” Dominic hates the word, Paul loves it, and I think it’s useful, but too general. I started the conversation with this. "Content" is such a bland word. Publishers: How would it transform your business to replace the word "content" with "answers," or "solutions," or "entertainment," or anything more precise and benefit-oriented? My intention wasn’t to diss the word “content,” but to highlight the benefit of being more specific. If I ask “What’s for dinner?” and my wife says, “food” – that’s true, but not very helpful. Or let’s say I’m curious about jazz, and I go to the music store and say, “I’m interested in jazz,” and the store owner says, “sure, we have lots of content.” Do I feel satisfied with that answer? I know the music store has “content,” but I’m specifically interested in jazz. Preferably big band, 40s to 50s-era stuff. Or maybe Maynard Ferguson. “Content” is a meta category. It includes text, video, audio, graphics, etc., and it doesn’t discriminate between business, personal, or educational, or between different topics. It’s useful as a very broad category. If I imagine a store that had books, music, videos, art, it would have every kind of “content” I could possibly want. That’s great in terms of being comprehensive. But nobody goes to the store for “content.” They want something more specific. Now Paul makes a good point that “content” is precisely how a publisher interacts with its customers. It’s the content that informs, educates, inspires, builds trust, etc. I agree. Up on my white board I have a list of things “content” should do: Update me Divert me Educate me Keep me on trend Give me perspective Inspire me Paul helps publishers license their material, so “content” is exactly the right word for him because it’s broad and all-inclusive. But when you’re creating or selling content, you need to dig down and talk about it more precisely. I think that precision of thought and language leads to better outcomes. If you’re in the market for selling answers, you don’t promote “content,” you promote answers. What I’m suggesting is that publishers should find their niche in the “content” universe and try to use those words.

What does “digital transformation” mean to you? My recent LinkedIn connection David Jansson turned me on to theaudiencers.com, which looks like a fantastic website for people in the media and publishing space. I was intrigued by an article titled “The 5 Rs of digital transformation: how Ringier is shaping the long-term success of its media titles,” by Madeleine White, which I’ll review today. Right off the bat I have to disagree with part of this article. It says “growth is all about the funnel” – and then shows an image of “the funnel” – which implies that every contact goes through the same journey towards a single goal, such as a subscription. I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s possible to have branching funnels with different goals. For example, you could recognize that part of your audience will never subscribe, so you put them in an advertising funnel and treat them very differently than the people with a propensity to subscribe, who you put in a subscription funnel. The basic concept of moving people through a funnel is sound, but I don’t like limiting it to only one funnel. I have a bias towards models, checklists, acronyms and things that help organize the thoughts – so I was drawn to “the 5 R’s of digital transformation,” which are … Relevance – that’s a good one, although I would add “valuable.” An article might be “relevant” to me in some generic sense, but not help me in any way. Reputation is important. I want reliable information. Reach isn’t my favorite concept for media companies. I have a separate podcast on that which I’ll link below. Revenue is crucial for the publisher, of course. Resilience is framed as diverse revenue streams, which is very important. Try not to be overly dependent on any given stream. They also take a cross-functional approach these topics, with people from advertising, editorial, business development, audience development, product, tech and digital user market. That’s fantastic, and I would love to see some stories about how they get all these groups to work together effectively. What I was hoping to see in this article was something about what “digital transformation” really means to them. For some, “digital transformation” means “moving from print to digital” – which I think is the wrong way to look at it. Rather, “digital transformation” should mean “how do we effectively serve people digitally.” Too often I see “digital transformation” as not much more than antipathy to print, which is wrong-headed. Print is a smaller piece of the puzzle, but still an important piece of the puzzle. There are situations where print is better, and there are situations where digital is better. Resources The Audiencers https://theaudiencers.com/ The 5 Rs of digital transformation: how Ringier is shaping the long-term success of its media titles https://theaudiencers.com/decisions/the-5-rs-of-digital-transformation-how-ringier-is-shaping-the-long-term-success-of-its-media-titles/ “Reach” is a misguided goal for publishers https://krehbielgroup.com/2023/08/15/reach-is-a-misguided-goal-for-publishers/ Cross functional operations workshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tz7ARnbX7Y

Give up on creating a perfect subscription model, but focus on continual improvement Bo Sacks distributed an article by Peter Houston titled “Is there such a thing as a perfect subscription model.” One of the things I learned in geology is that very few things are always or never, so when you see those words, a red flag should go up. The same is true in publishing and marketing – and, in most things. Also, I’m a big advocate of the 80-20 rule, and one of my mantras is that “perfect is the enemy of done.” Having said all that, Peter gives some advice on the factors that an effective subscription strategy should consider. The first is audience. “Not every reader is the same,” Peter says, which is certainly true. But it seems that we have to flip back and forth between regarding an audience as a homogenous unit and thinking of it as a collection of unique individuals. On the “homogenous unit” side of the ledger would be things like … * Main magazine content. You have to have a focus, and you have to tell advertisers what group you’re trying to reach. * Seasonal themes. Your Fall issue can’t worry about the fact that 2 percent of your readers are in the southern hemisphere where it’s Spring. The “unique individuals” side would include things like … * Specialty products. If you have a powerboat magazine, you have to remember that not everybody has the same kind of power boat. They vary in a hundred ways, and there are different concerns for each niche. * Also, as Peter points out in his article, if you have a city magazine, some of your readers will be residents and some will be visitors. The trick is to know when to apply the right rule. When do you treat your audience as a homogenous unit, and when do you recognize different segments? There can’t be a general rule that applies to all publications, but I think the smart approach is to make sure you don’t let one or the other get out of balance. Next comes value, and he’s focusing on the value that comes from being unique. For example, lots of people have financial advice, but you have an exclusive deal with Warren Buffet. Peter suggests this rule: “the more common the content published, the harder it is to sell straight subscriptions.” That seems to play out every day in the newspaper market – which I believe is over-saturated. If your paper has essentially the same story as 99 other papers, why should someone subscribe to yours? Distribution is the next factor. Peter talks about print vs. digital, but each of those can be subdivided, and we can add audio, video, etc. You might find a way to add value by distributing your content in a way that appeals to a niche audience. For example, my daughter the Captain once said that truck drivers should be the most educated people on the planet, because they can spend the day listening to books on tape, lectures, podcasts, etc. I don’t know how many truck drivers want to do that, but it illustrates the power of distribution. Peter’s final factor is competition, and he gives the example of finding a lower-priced niche where someone else has taken the high end of the market. It’s a good list, but I didn’t feel quite satisfied, so I asked ChatGPT to come up with some other factors, and it suggested quite a few more, including … * Pricing strategy, which Peter address under competition, but there’s more to it. * Marketing and promotion. * Subscriber engagement. * Customer support. * Technology infrastructure, and so on. It’s actually a long list, and you should try it yourself. The larger point that Peter is making plays off Heraclitus, who famously said “you can never step into the same river twice” – because the river is constantly changing. I don’t think Heraclitus would be a huge fan of that popular definition of insanity about doing the same thing and expecting different results. Obviously there’s some sense to the saying, but we also have to recognize that you can’t ever do the same thing. The world has changed between your attempts. That’s why an A/B test has to run both panels at the same time. The point is that things are in flux, and you have to think of managing your subscription business as if you had a hundred dials in front of you, because you might need to adjust them to changing circumstances. The hard part is having enough data to know how to adjust those dials. Resources ======= Is there such a thing as a perfect subscription model? https://internationalmagazinecentre.com/housty-is-there-such-a-thing-as-the-perfect-subscriptions-model/

If you’re trying to set up a customer data platform, or any system that collects data, my standard advice is to start with your use cases. That is, what do you want to do? Another way to approach the issue is to ask “what do I want my reports to look like”? Or, “what questions do I want to ask?” Let’s start with profit per customer. You’ll need some basic things, like customer ID, order ID, order amount, and profit margin. But it’s pretty likely that your profit margin will vary by product, so you’ll also have to know which products are in each order, and you’ll have to calculate the net profit margin for all the products in that order. Then you’ll have some complicating factors like discounts. Here’s the next step. Imagine you’re presenting this information at a board meeting. What hard questions are people going to ask? For example, * What are the drivers of customer profitability? * How can we identify and attract the most profitable customers? * Are there any customer segments that we should target more heavily? (Or ignore.) * How can we improve customer profitability? * Can we predict long-term profitability for any given segment of customers? What kind of data do you need to answer these questions? You’ll need recency, frequency, and velocity data for different customer segments. You’ll want demographic information on all your customers. You might want some information on competitive factors that affect different products or customer segments. All those things will inform how you set up your customer data platform so you can be sure you’re collecting the information you need to answer these questions. But we’re not done yet. That’s just one KPI (key performance indicator). You’ll need to go through the same exercise for … * Gross margins on sales * Sales forecasting by month * Inventory projections * Profit and loss analysis But that’s all just e-commerce stuff. If you’re a media company, you’re going to worry about audience engagement, ad revenue, subscriber growth, customer satisfaction, and so on. And for each one of those you’ll have to go through the same exercise. How are you going to report on it, what data do you need for those reports, and what hard questions is management going to ask you? The point here is that thinking ahead of time about what you want to get out of your data will help you know what to collect and how to structure it, and that’s crucial for success with a customer data platform.

Lessons from Hawaii 1. Maps. When Europeans first met Polynesians, they were astonished to find them scattered across an enormous ocean, and befuddled about how they were able to traverse such distances. It's still not entirely clear how they did it. The attempts by Europeans to learn Polynesian navigation seem to have been hindered by the fact that Europeans thought of maps and locations in terms of fixed references like longitude and latitude, while Polynesians may have thought in terms of the process of getting from one island to another. Concepts like north and south may have been less useful than "with the wind" or "toward the mountain." Lesson. There are many ways to look at the same information. Learn to conceptualize data, processes, and solutions from completely different points of view. A radical change in perspective might give you and your customers a competitive advantage. 2. The tyranny of the present. The Polynesians not only settled islands separated by enormous distances, but claimed to have travelled between them in the not-too-distant past. By the time they met Europeans, that art seems to have been lost, and it's hard to imagine (even today) how it could have been done with the technology they had. So … are the stories true? Lesson. The world changes. Something that seems impossible today might have been possible under different circumstances. For example, if there were more sea turtles, whales, or migratory birds to follow. Kids today can hardly conceive how my generation was able to meet and do things without cell phones. Keep an open mind about what's possible and what data can be applied to a problem. Also, you never know when you might gain or lose a tool that's crucial to your business. Be prepared to make contingency plans. Resources The Krehbiel Letter -- The Hawaii Edition https://krehbielgroup.com/letter-archives/Krehbiel-Letter-2023-10.html

For today’s podcast I’m using my “future goggles” – as you can see – to make some predictions about the publishing business. Or, rather, to give you a perspective on how you might forecast the future of publishing. I got the general idea from a Bo Sacks email titled “Publishing 2033.” I’ll provide the link below. The key to imagining the future of publishing is to forget about publishers and think about readers, and how technology will change our habits. Right now, most of us have several types of customized feeds. That might be the news feed on your phone, what you see on X, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok, or wherever you choose to waste your time on such things. In addition to that, you might have some specialized publications, like a magazine or a newsletter. And wending its way through all of these things, you might have some personalities you follow. It’s a bit of a jumbled mess. AI is going to help us organize all that. But I think it’s a mistake to imagine any particular kind of organization – as if everyone will do it the same way. AI agents will make it possible for me to collect and organize the information I care about exactly the way I want it, and you’ll do it differently. At the same time, somebody needs to pay for all this. To date, the internet has largely run on the assumption that all content should be free, supported by ads. That’s the bias of most tech companies, and a lot of content will continue to follow that model. But imagine this. Let’s say that part of the setup of your personalized AI agent was to decide how much you’re willing to spend a month on information. Of course it would get more granular than that, but let’s leave it simple for the time being. Most people would opt to pay nothing, so their daily feed would be full of ad-supported content. Now let’s say your AI agent noticed that you had a particular interest in archeology, and it said for five bucks a month I can get you much better archeology content from these sources. That might be a good deal for you. Think about how that changes the equation for the publisher. It’s no longer a question of an individual coming to a website with a special offer for a discreet collection of content. It might be that in some cases, but in other cases the publisher will be interacting with the AI agent. The AI agent will ask the publisher if it can get all the articles on Middle East archeology for a buck a month, or something like that. The AI agent is going to find me the best deals on precisely the content I prefer. Such a system would transform marketing and pricing decisions for content because the publisher won’t be making the offer directly to the consumer. Think about that, and imagine what you’d have to change to live in that sort of an environment. Also, the whole concept of an audience will change. The brand won’t control or own the audience. The audience – or the community, or whatever you want to call it – will be created as AI agents find people with common interests and connect them. Of course the most likely scenario is that I’m completely wrong about all this. Things will develop organically, and no expert is going to be able to predict or control the trajectory. Something will evolve out of the individual choices of billions of consumers. So what’s a publisher to do? First, think creatively about what might happen. Second, imagine how your operations would have to change to survive in these different scenarios. Third, don’t build for any of them specifically, but try to create a platform that’s flexible enough to adjust when the new thing comes along. Resources Publishing 2033 https://www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/publishing-2033-22340

Is Elon among the censors? We’ve all heard about the Twitter files, and allegations of collusion between the government and social media to regulate speech. And now, possibly challenging his pledge to protect free speech, we’re hearing reports that Elon Musk’s X is throttling users who share stories from The New York Times. Only time will tell if this particular story is true, but Lord Acton would predict it or something like it will be eventually. Power to censor speech is simply too compelling to leave in anyone’s hands. It’s outrageous, unacceptable, and un-American that a few tech titans get to control access to information. That has to stop. But in the meanwhile, content creators need to cope with the mess as it exists. Platforms can demonetize you – or restrict your reach – if the people in power don’t like what you’re saying. And it’s not always about censorship. Sometimes it’s simply not in their business interests to promote your content. So they stop, and you lose lots of traffic. It’s not a stable situation. That’s why I encourage all content creators to become less dependent on the platforms. Find a way to reach your audience where Elon, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, Sundar – or whoever else tries to regulate speech – can’t affect you. Or at least not very much. Own your own distribution channels to the extent you can. Work on building your email newsletter. Focus on long-term relationships of trust with your subscribers. Build a community around your brand. Try to work your way into your subscribers’ daily habits and workflow. Become essential. And if Big Tech land is profitable for you, make sure to diversify, and be prepared in case that spigot gets cut off. Dominic Young made this comment on LinkedIn yesterday. “The strategic imperatives for publishers to thrive online come down two things. Revenue independence and distribution/discovery independence.” Think about those things, and I’ll try to provide ideas and food for thought when I get back from my vacation. That’s right, I’ll be away for a bit, so there won’t be any new podcasts until September 26th. But I hope to come back refreshed and full of new ideas. Talk to you then. Resources Twitter appears to throttle users trying to share New York Times articles for months: report https://nypost.com/2023/09/11/twitter-appears-to-throttle-users-trying-to-share-new-york-times-articles-for-months-report/

Can publishers fight Skynet? Cold: You won't out-tech them, but that doesn't mean you have to lie down and take it. I have encouraged publishers to fight back against AI in 4 ways. (1) To change their robots.txt file to kindly request the monsters to leave you alone. (2) To enforce that on the server side. (3) To change their terms and conditions to make the lawyers happy and provide the basis for future lawsuit. (4) To start working on their own large language models. My friend Charles Benaiah thinks that’s tilting at windmills. Skynet will win. Charles makes four points. 1. Skynet doesn’t need your content. He says "media is highly derivative” and points out that they can get something equivalent to your content from 100 other sites that won’t block the bots. 2. There are loopholes. Despite your best efforts, Skynet will find a way to get your content if it wants to. 3. Even if they couldn’t scrape your website, they can sign up to your emails and get a lot of your content that way. I should add they can also follow your social media. 4. If they really want your content, they can send people to the library and scan it. These are all good points, but I’d like to give a broader context. The first point is the strongest. No matter how good you think your journalism is, there’s so much stuff out there for free that AI will be able to create something as good as your content even if they can’t crawl your site. That’s true. But there’s a perceived value to an article that comes from a so-called reputable source. If the chat bots are required to show sources, or if people come to believe that their content is compiled from Fred and Ethel’s Blog, Twitter Posts, and YouTube videos by people who sniff glue all day, that will give other sources an edge — even if, objectively speaking, the LLM is able to turn that straw into gold. In other words, perception is important here. Chat bots are mostly free right now, but they won’t always be, so at some point they’ll be competing against you. Will the market pay $10 to get news that’s spun from the straw of “free crap on the internet,” or would they rather pay $10 to get something from a professional? I don’t know, but let’s at least lay the groundwork to make that a possible future. The second, third, and fourth points — that there are technical loopholes, that they can get your content from your emails, and that they can scan hard copies at the library — are also true, which is why publishers also need to update their terms and conditions so they have the grounds to sue Skynet. Of course the wheels of justice move slowly, but publishers did recently win against The Internet Archive for violating copyright. So there is some hope. It’s possible — probably even likely — that this is a losing battle. The tech companies give a lot more to Congress than media companies do, so they’ll probably get some insane carve out, like Section 230. But ancestry DNA says I have a lot of northern blood in my veins. The idea of a desperate losing battle against the forces of wickedness and chaos kinda appeals to me. So I say fight the power. Order and sanity may prevail. We might come to realize that copyright is an important thing. Or … maybe this train will run you over. But you don’t have to lay down on the tracks. Resources A beautiful (AI) mind https://mediamakersmeet.com/a-beautiful-ai-mind/

I like the idea, but it doesn’t seem to work I've noticed that the subject of micropayments tends to annoy people. I'm wondering why. Here are some options. (1) We've heard this old story for decades, and it never seems to work. Stop beating a dead horse. (2) The ad-supported model requires no work on the customer side, even though they hate ads. The subscription model requires some work on the customer side, but it's understandable. The micropayment ecosystem is confusing. Until there's a universal, simple standard (which will never happen), it won't catch on. (3) "Micropayment" means macro hassle for very little return. You have to fuss with all kinds of little details to get a dime. I'm not saying these criticisms are fair. It's possible to create a micropayment system that's easy on both the publisher and the consumer. But perception is more important than reality in some cases. Another psychological barrier is that no big media brand has made it work. The New York Times sells subscriptions and doesn't use micropayments. I asked Bard why there is so much emotion surrounding the debate over micropayments. He said, "First, micropayments are a new and unproven technology. There is no guarantee that they will be successful, and there is a risk that they could alienate readers." Okay. Bard is stupid. It's not new. It's been around for decades. "Second," Bard continues, "micropayments challenge the status quo. The current system of free content supported by ads is very convenient for readers, and it is difficult to change." Thank you, Google, for supporting your own revenue model. "Third," says Bard, "micropayments raise questions about the future of journalism. If readers are willing to pay for individual pieces of content, then what will happen to the traditional news organizations that rely on subscriptions and advertising?" No. Independent journalists -- like on Substack -- use subscriptions. Here's the thing. Micropayments make a lot of sense. First, it's similar to the newsstand experience, where you buy one copy. That's a tried and true model. Second, most people don't want to subscribe. Subscriptions are a hassle, and they have a high "you're trying to trick me" factor, with hidden recurring payments, making it hard to unsubscribe, intro offers that balloon into outrageous bills, etc. So what's the deal? The bottom line seems to be that they just don't work, for whatever reason. I’d like to be wrong about this, so prove me wrong. Not with arguments or philosophy or ideas, but with actual examples of major media outlets who are making it work. Resources Research shows micropayments are not the panacea for news media https://www.inma.org/blogs/reader-revenue/post.cfm/research-shows-micropayments-are-not-the-panacea-for-news-media?_zs=Uh99R1&_zl=PwXD7 Could micropayments give a boost to publishers? https://the-media-leader.com/could-micropayments-give-a-boost-to-publishers/

I don’t like personality tests and I don’t like generalizations about generations I frequently see articles on LinkedIn and elsewhere about how to manage Gen Z, or (most recently) things like why managers complain about this or that with Gen Z. I don’t like those articles, because I don’t believe that every Gen Z person has all those characteristics, and – in my experience – that’s where this stuff leads. It’s like saying that all men are a certain way, or all Germans are a certain way. There are averages. I’ve been told that men like things and gadgets one standard deviation more than women do. But a female friend loves to drive race cars and owns a shop that specializes in Porches. She likes gadgets and machines and stuff more than most men. An anecdote – like my story about my friend – doesn’t make the average false. It just shows that you can’t apply the average to every individual in the group. I’m sure there are perfectly true averages about Gen Z, and I’m also sure there are plenty of Gen Z people who defy those averages. Both things can be true. The same concept applies to personality tests. I don’t like it when people are pigeon-holed because they scored such and so on Myers Briggs. Just because you lean towards extroversion doesn’t mean you’re always an extrovert in all situations. Things are more nuanced than that. Now that I’ve criticized this whole business, I do believe there are two ways these sorts of articles can be valuable. First, transform the question from “how do you deal with Gen Z?” to “how do you deal with people who have such-and-so characteristics?” For example, people who were quarantined during a particularly consequential part of their life – like their last couple years of high school, for example – are very likely to show certain symptoms. Some people say they lack soft skills. But not all of them. You can’t say, “You’re Gen Z, therefore …” You can and should learn how to manage someone with poor soft skills – whether they’re in Gen Z or not. Similarly, you can learn how to deal with different personality traits without having to pin labels on people, or force them to take unscientific personality tests. I can learn how to manage a sensitive person without making grand generalizations about which demographic group is more sensitive than another. That’s exactly what you don’t want to do, e.g., “You were born this year, so you must be like this.” That’s horrible. Don’t treat people that way. Second, these kinds of articles can alert you to potential problems that aren’t on your radar at all. For example, my friend Janet Granger tells me that Gen Z (on average, of course) has different values than other generations. They may not believe in putting in extra hours to get ahead, and they may not accept the idea of doing the grunt work to climb their way up the hierarchy. It’s too easy to assume that everybody is like you and values the things you value. These “what Generation Whatever wants” articles can point out important possible differences so you can keep your eye out for them. But to reiterate my main point: by all means learn different management tools to deal with different sorts of situations, but don’t prejudge people based on what group somebody puts them in.

Subscription money is better than ad money Carolyn Morgan just published a great article on “Best practice in registration, metering and digital subs.” I’ll summarize her main points along with my commentary. She starts with the assertion that the free to air display ad-funded model is starting to unravel. It seems to me this has been a long, slow process, but perhaps we have reached an inflection point where more and more people realize that the ad-supported model isn’t so great. In any event, subscription revenue is where it’s at. So … on to Carolyn’s 8 points. Analyze and segment your audience You need to think of segmentation in a few different ways. First, people who might subscribe vs. people who never will. Second, your market will have different roles and interests. Think of both as ways to focus your online marketing, and also to target and personalize content. A customer data platform can be useful for this. Understand what content is valued — and where the gaps are The question is “valued by whom?” Content that’s valued by the drive-bys might work for the ad-supported model, but it doesn’t help you on the subscription side. You want to focus on the content that is valued by the people who might subscribe. Identify the content that’s core audience likes. Decide where to set your registration wall – and what stays free Carolyn is either recommending or assuming that you’ll have some free content and some content behind a paywall. She says “content that is unique, hard to find, provides value and insight, and appeals to your core segments, should be behind a reg wall.” Of course there are many different paywall models, and you should study them before you pick one. Track what prompts visitors to register and optimize sign-up rates Think of a funnel with 3 components. Free, stop, convert. (“Stop” means the people who have hit the paywall offer.) Carolyn says your stop rate should be greater than 5%, but I think that depends a lot on your market. In any event, monitor all these numbers carefully and experiment. Understand what registered visitors value This is going to take some careful research, especially if you have several market segments, but it’s crucial to know what content drives the buy decision. Craft an enticing subs proposition After you figure out what content drives the buy decision, focus on how that content benefits your potential subscribers. If you have several market segments, find a way to present different offers to each segment. Once again, a CDP can help with that. Track and optimize conversions Without falling into analysis psychosis, you’re going to have to track several different things here. First, separate out the drive-bys. It doesn’t matter what they do. Second, focus on the percentages in the three parts of your funnel: free, stop, and registered. Remember that the goal is registrations over the long term. A short-term increase – by, for example, exposing too many people to the paywall offer – might not be in your best interests. Also, remember to test different offers. Nurture new digital subs to maximize retention Registration isn’t the end of your work. You have to onboard them and keep them engaged, so develop an effective onboarding series, and make sure you have the tools in place to measure engagement – especially with new sign-ups. Resources Best practice in registration, metering and digital subs https://mediamakersmeet.com/best-practice-in-registration-metering-and-digital-subs/

Everybody’s a dumbass sometimes. That’s why we need fact checkers. But not everyone can afford a fact checker. What do you do? Many years ago I was studying to be a pastor. As a consequence, I know more than a little bit about the Bible and related topics. That’s way in the rear-view mirror of my life, but from time to time I like to see what the boys are up to, so yesterday I listened to a podcast interview of a priest explaining various reasons why people should believe. He made some very good arguments on topics he clearly knows cold, but then he strayed outside his area of expertise – into geology, which is something I also know a little about – and he sounded quite foolish. Unfortunately, this casts everything he says in a bad light. The listener is going to think, “why should I believe all that stuff he said about A, when I know for sure he’s full of beans about B?” That’s not strictly fair because, as I said above, someone who’s a legitimate expert on A might be a complete rube about B. But … that’s how people are going to react, whether it’s fair or logical or not. So what can we learn from this? As a content creator, stick to what you know. Once you stray into strange territory, you’re probably going to mess things up. If you have to stray outside your area of expertise, get someone who knows that field to check your work. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of repeating something that “everybody knows” is true, but which is actually nonsense. Whole books have been written with examples of false things that everybody thinks are true. But what if you’re like me? Too poor to hire a fact checker. What do you do? 1. Develop an acute inner epistemologist. I apologize for the $5 word, but it fits here. Epistemology has to do with the nature of knowledge, and whether you’re justified in believing something. When you’re tempted to make a factual claim, ask yourself why you believe it. What grounds do you have for that belief? If it’s something vague like, “everybody knows that,” or “I saw this TV show one time…,” then … it might be wrong. It’s like my definition of a good editor. A good editor is someone who knows when he needs to look something up. 2. Learn to read your own copy skeptically. Imagine you were going to have to provide a defense for what you say. 3. If you’re not willing to defend something, either don’t say it – that’s probably best – or at the bare minimum use some hedging language. 4. Build a network of smart people that can look over your shoulder and help you not to make a fool of yourself. 5. hen you do make a mistake, own it and admit it.